Storage devices, such as hard disk drives and optical drives, are widely used to provide mass storage for various computing applications. Computers communicate with the storage devices using one of several interfaces. The Universal Serial Bus (USB), Small Computer Systems Interface (SCSI), Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE) 1394, Serial Advanced Technology Attachment (Serial ATA or SATA), and External Serial Advanced Technology Attachment (eSATA), are examples of such interfaces.
The SATA interface was developed by the Serial ATA International Organization, a consortium of computer and mass storage device manufacturers that defines and adopts specifications for the Serial ATA Interface. The Serial ATA specification is entitled “Serial ATA International Organization: Serial ATA”, and is referred to herein as the SATA specification. Revision 2.5 of the SATA specification was publicly released on Oct. 27, 2005.
The eSATA interface is described in the SATA specification as a point-to-point connection between a host (e.g., computer) and a storage device external to the host. FIG. 1 is a block diagram of an eSATA system according to the prior art. System 100 includes external storage device 102, host 104, and internal storage device 106 within host 104. External storage device 102 connects to host 104 using eSATA connectors 108, 110 and eSATA cable 112. Host 104 uses cable 112 to transfer data to and from external storage device 102. The SATA specification, however, does not define a connection that allows another host to access host 104 in order to read data from, or write data to, internal storage device 106.